This blog was written thanks to the expertise of the Brian Barr Solicitors team, including Alex Cohen, Philip Cohen and Steven Akerman, leading experts in compensation claims for chronic pain and serious injury.
If you have been injured in a road traffic collision or in an accident at work, making a personal injury claim may not be at the top of your list of priorities.
You may, understandably, be concentrating on recovering, getting back to work or simply trying to get your life back to normal. But there is one thing you shouldn’t ignore: the time limit for making a claim.
In England and Wales, there are strict rules about how long you have to start personal injury proceedings. Missing the relevant deadline can mean losing your right to pursue a claim.
For many personal injury claims, the general time limit is three years.
Under the Limitation Act 1980, a claim will generally need to be brought within three years of the date of the accident / collision or, in certain circumstances, within three years of the date you became aware of your injury and its significance.
For a straightforward accident, such as a road traffic collision or an accident at work, the starting point will often be the date of the incident. For example, if you were injured in an accident on 1 September 2024, the three-year limitation period would generally expire in 2027.
However, it is important not to assume that every claim follows exactly the same rules.
Some injuries are not immediately obvious. You might initially think that you have suffered a minor injury, only to develop ongoing symptoms later.
In other cases, you may not discover the full significance of an injury until some time after the accident.
Brian Barr Solicitors are chronic pain specialists and this is often the situation with many of the cases we see where a client goes on to develop fibromyalgia, CRPS, FND or chronic pain
The law recognises this in certain circumstances. The three-year period can run from the date of “knowledge” if this is later than the date the cause of action arose.
Determining exactly when someone had the necessary knowledge can be complicated, which is why getting specialist legal advice can be important if your accident happened some time ago, especially if it involves ‘invisible illnesses’ such as fibromyalgia, CRPS or chronic pain.
A question we are often asked is “Does contacting a solicitor stop the clock?” This is an important point.
Simply contacting a solicitor does not stop the limitation period. Starting the claims process and starting court proceedings are not necessarily the same thing.
Depending on the circumstances, there may be a number of steps that need to be taken before proceedings are issued. This means you should not leave contacting a solicitor until shortly before the three-year deadline.
The earlier you seek advice, the more time there is to investigate what happened, gather evidence, obtain medical information and deal with the other party or their insurer.
Three years can sound like a long time. But in reality, it can pass quickly.
There may be circumstances in which the court has discretion to allow a claim to proceed outside the usual limitation period, but this should not be relied upon as an alternative to acting within the normal deadline.
If you think you may have a personal injury claim, the safest approach is to seek advice as soon as possible.
